Monday, January 27, 2014

Tutorial: Watercoloring with Stamps

One of our Inspiration Design Team members, Swarup Murthy is an AMAZING artist. She does a lot of watercoloring and recently did a project for the Crafter's Companion team using this gorgeous set from the Sheena collection called Provence.

Here is the tutorial Swarup put together on her blog...

After repeated requests for a tutorial on how I go about watercoloring, I have finally remembered to take pictures as I work ! I assure you a video tutorial is definitely in the future; however, until then I will try to share some stepped out pics to help you get an idea of how I work on a typical card.

The other day I received a mail appreciating my work and also asking why I call these small pieces of art as cards and not a painting! The reason I don't term my work as paintings is because I use stamps and that makes my work not original enough to be termed as a painting...so I believe!

Here is how I typically work....I am no trained artist, just sharing what I have learned through trial and error...and I am still a student !

I like to choose a stamp which has ample scope for coloring. Here I have used a Crafter's Companion bicycle stamp . It's by Sheena Douglass and the collection has some wonderful line drawings which are a colorist's dream!

Stamp the image and sketch the scene around it very lightly with a pencil.Contrary to the common belief that one should use waterproof inks,I almost always use waterbased inks, I prefer the stamped image to not have a strong outline and blend into the rest of the scene and that can only be achieved when one uses waterbased inks. I sometimes stamp using watercolor itself.

Now the coloring fun begins! Remember with watercolor , your highlights are the white of the paper, so save them if you need them! Either go around them or use masking fluid to protect the whites.

Keep adjusting values...

Dampen the sky area with a wet brush and drop in the blue and blend while wet to avoid hard edges.

Watercolor dries lighter ....

Add the darks and look for visual balance. you want your eyes to go directly to the focal point ..in this case the bicycle. It always helps to keep the edges a shade darker the center, this prevents the eye from jumping all over the painting.

I was truly overwhelmed by the number of tutorial requests. I almost felt guilty for not sharing more and sooner, but the single most reason being that I like to work at night and taking pictures in such low light, defeats the purpose of a tutorial!